Vol. 1, No. 2
IN NATIONAL
AFFAIRS
DR. JEFFRIES
and the Anti-Semitic Branch
of the Afrocentrism Movement
KENNETH S. STERN
L1BRABY —
•
‫־‬
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THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE Institute of Human Relations 165 East 56 Street, New York, NY 10022
^
IN NATIONAL
DR. JEFFRIES
and the Anti-Semitic Branch
of the Af rocentrism Movement
KENNETH S. STERN
AFFAIRS
Kenneth S. Stern is program specialist on anti-Semitism and extremism for the American Jewish
Committee.
Copyright © 1991
A l l rights reserved
The American Jewish Committee
DR. L E O N A R D JEFFRIES
AND T H E ANTI-SEMITIC B R A N C H
OF T H E AFROCENTRISM M O V E M E N T
Anti-Semitism exists in one part of the Afrocentrism movement. That was amply demonstrated by
C C N Y professor Dr. Leonard Jeffries during a July 20, 1991 speech at the Empire State Black Arts and
Cultural Festival in Albany, New York. Dr. Jeffries, chairman of the African-American Studies department
at City College, claimed, among other things, that there is an anti-black "conspiracy, planned and plotted
and programmed out of Hollywood," by "people called Greenberg and Weisbcrg and Trigliani."
The effort to promote study of Africa as part of the central curriculum is, by and large, one without
an anti-Semitic component. It took Jewish professors to promote literature by Jewish authors that had been
overlooked and to pull Jewish studies from the fringes of academics into the respected center. A n d there
are many serious scholars, African American and others, who are trying to promote African studies. The
inclusion of neglected fields of study is important for all students.
Yet, on the extreme of the movement are those who speak of "Afrocentrism," and mean by that
term not, as Dr. Molefi Kete Asante of Temple University says, the effort to "reposition Africa in people's
minds," but rather, the superiority of all things African to anything non-African. Dr. Leonard Jeffries is a
central member of this movement - one that is Europhobic and anti-Semitic, as well as racist, anti-Arab
and anti-Catholic. But anti-Semitism is what it does best. Anti-Semitism is not an "add on" for Dr. Jeffries'
Afrocentrism - it is a central part, as his July presentation, excerpted below, demonstrates. Dr. Jeffries'
brand of anti-Semitism is of the classic mold ‫ ״‬it sees hidden conspiracies attacking the body of a nonJewish population.
Before his July 20, 1991 speech, Dr. Leonard Jeffries was already known for his teaching that blacks
are racially superior to whites because blacks, whom he calls "sun people," have more melanin in their skin
than whites, whom he calls "ice people." (Even though Jeffries is generally believed to be the inventor of
this theory, it was actually founded by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing who, according to the A m s t e r d a m
News,
contended that "white racism and aggression are the result of the lack of melanin. This genetic deficiency,
the lack of color, compels while people to be hostile to people of color.")
In November, 1990, Dr. Jeffries organized the "Second National Conference on the Infusion of
African and African-American Content in the High School Curriculum" in Atlanta. Over 1,000
predominately black educators from around the country attended.
According to the November 26, 1990 New R e p u b l i c , the Atlanta conference reflected "the conviction
that all Western knowledge is a corruption of Egyptian, i.e. black African thought [and therefore]
schoolchildren, black and white, should be taught everything from a black African perspective." One speaker,
Wade Nobles, an educator from Oakland, California, said, "When we adopt other people's theories, we are
like Frankenstein doing other people's wills. It's like someone drinking some good stuff, vomiting it, and
then we have to catch the vomit and drink it ourselves. . . . The Greeks gave back the vomit of the African
way. . . . Don't become vomit-drinkers."
Dr. Jeffries also has little tolerance for anything Western, and his agenda is not the inclusion of
African-based studies in education, but to make it supreme, and every other inquiry of study inferior. T o
him, the inclusive notion of a multicultural education is "mental genocide."
The 1,000 black school teachers assembled in Atlanta heard, according to the C i n c i n n a t i E n q u i r e r ,
that "Jesus was black; Moses was black; Buddha was black. . . . Ancient Egypt was the source of all modern
learning and an advanced black society. Greek philosophers stole the wisdom of Egypt and made it their
own. Subsequent generations of whites rewrote history and turned Egypt into a white society. . . . The Book
of Exodus is wrong. Jews were never slaves under the pharaohs. Rather they were guest workers of benign
black rules who were too culturally advanced to have been oppressors. . . . Blacks are the real discoverers
of America, having preceded Columbus by some 3,000 years."
Not explained, presumably, was how the Chinese and Japanese societies developed. But if one
wanted to know more about the Jews, the P r o t o c o l s of t h e E l d e r s of Z i o n , the anti-Semitic Czarist forgery
that alleges a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, and which fueled many pogroms, was sold at the conference.
The culminating event in Atlanta was a speech by John H . Clarke, professor emeritus at Hunter
College in New York, who, according to the New R e p u b l i c , said that no black American should soil herself
with Christianity. "At what point do we stop this mental prostitution to a religion invented by foreigners?"
he asked. " A l l religion is artificial. A l l the religions of the world are male chauvinist murder cults."
For Dr. Clarke, as for Dr. Jeffries, hatred of things white is not enough; Jews are an especial target.
As reported in the Afrocentric-based magazine A l k e b u l a n i a n , vol. 1 #6 (July 1989), D r . Clarke said, at a
speech at Wayne County Community College:
"African people have been manipulated into agreeing with everything white, from
a white Jesus to white bread. A mere handful of people utilized the word 'Holocaust' and
made the entire world weep for them making Black people forget that it was this same
handful who participated in the African holocaust." [African slavery]
Dr. Clarke pointed out the fact that the "evil" genius of Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx
and Albert Einstein has colonized the minds of the world and he asked why this minute
group of people were so effective.
The A l k e b u l a n i a n describes itself as dedicated to "the power of African pride and dignity revealing
a divinity of spirituality as lived during the great era of Egyptian Kings and Queens. Our magazine will
speak the truth and expose the falsehoods that have weakened a precious people through the course of
history." The magazine, which claims that the Talmud was written by "racist dogs calling themselves Jewish
Talmudist Scholars" (Arabs are also called "dogs") is being distributed on college campuses. A t Ferris State
University in Michigan it has been recommended by the Director of Minority Affairs. Reportedly associated
with A l k e b u l a n i a n is M r . Ashra Kwesi, who regularly lectures on college campuses, and has appeared at
Stanford, S M U and U C L A . He has an anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, sexist and homophobic delivery, regularly
referring to the "faggot Pope" and "faggot America."
But of all the haters in this circle of Afrocentrism, D r . Jeffries is the most vitriolic. His speech in
Albany demonstrates the centrality of anti-Semitism to his teaching. Half of his nearly two hour speech was
spent attacking Jews. Dr. Jeffries preaches Jew-hatred like a religion ‫ ״‬in fact, he tells people to "put [his
type of Afrocentrism] on top of your bible or move the bible over, or the Koran."
JEFFRIES, T H E JEWS, A N D T H E M E D I A
Dr. Jeffries points to a real problem when he speaks about the stereotypes of African Americans
produced in Hollywood. But he has copied the anti-Semitism of Louis Farrakhan, Gerald K . Smith and
Legrand Clegg. Rather than point to the cultural and political aspects of racism in 20th century American
society, he prefers a conspiracy theory that has proven its worth: the old-time Pra/oco/-flavored, "the Jews
control the media" canard.
From the fact that many Jews have been and are connected with Hollywood, Dr. Jeffries believes
that there is something in the Jewishness of the Hollywood folk that is responsible for racism in the movies.
Not mentioned is the fact that Jews went into the movie business because that new industry, unlike many
others, was not closed to Jews by discrimination. Not mentioned is the fact that the most racist film ever
to come out of Hollywood ‫־‬- one which is still on neo-Nazi video lists - is D . W . Griffith's B i r t h of a
N o t i o n , and that this silent film which gave birth to the new industry was not made by a Jew.
At his July 20, 1991 speech, Dr. Jeffries said:
For years I grew up as a youngster just like you did going to movies where the
African peoples were completely denigrated. That was a conspiracy, planned and plotted
and programmed out of Hollywood, where people called Greenberg and Weisberg and
Trigliani and what not. It's not being anti-Semitic to mention who developed Hollywood.
Their names are there. M G M , Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Adolph Zukor. Fox. Russian Jewry
had a particular control over the movies, and their financial partners, the Mafia, put
together a system of destruction of black people.
DR. J E F F R I E S , J E W S A N D S L A V E R Y
No thinking person can deny the centrality of slavery to the African-American experience. Dr.
Jeffries (as do many followers of Minister Farrakhan) sees Jews as the driving force behind that experience
— and it is a lesson he wants every school child to learn.
In his July 20 speech, Dr. Jeffries explained:
Most of you don't realize that when the New Y o r k Times
put in the paper that
Jeffries said, rich Jews were involved in the enslavement process, they put that in there to
paint me as an anti-Semitic [sic]. . . . A n d the head Jew at City College, Dr. Bernard
Sohmner, saw me after the article in the Times,
said, "Len, everybody knows rich Jews
helped finance the slave trade." If everybody knows it, then let's put it in the classroom. .
. . Let's talk about who financed, planned, operated and maintained the slave system. . . .
Newport, Rhode Island at the time of the American revolution was the leading legal
slaving center in America and that was the home of the largest Jewish community and most
active, wealthy Jewish community in America. . . . Aaron Lopez, Lopez of Newport, in the
1750's and '60s, one of the largest slavers out of Newport, Rhode Island, a community that
had a number of outstanding wealthy Jews who not only controlled a couple of dozen, but
they controlled most, if not all, of the 30 distilleries that process molasses from the
Caribbean into rum to be sold to the Native Americans as "fire water" and to be sold to
Africa for enslaved Africans.
-4-
That individual Jews, like others, were involved in the slave trade is, of course, both true and
regrettable, but it had nothing to do with the fact they were Jews. Again, Dr. Jeffries sees all others
involved in the slave trade as slave traders -‫ ־‬and Jews as somehow drawn to such practices as Jews. His
anti-Semitism infects his view of history further: he sees Jews as responsible for the behavior of others
involved in the slave trade.
1
Dr. Jeffries asks:
Where do you want to start? Y o u want to go back into the Spanish Sephardic
Jewish community? Then get Stephen Birmingham's The G r a n d e e s . The grandees, the Jewish
rich that supported the Spanish throne and helped lay the foundation for the enslavement
in the 1400's and 1500's.
Even after the Jewish community was persecuted in Spain with the Inquisition in
1492, many of them that converted to Christianity stayed in Spain and helped the Spanish
king and queen, who was anti-Semitic, Queen Isabella, helped her maintain the slave system
against the Africans and Native Americans.
Where do you want to start? D o you want to go to Amsterdam? Then get a book
by Jonathan Israel on E u r o p e a n Jewry I n t h e Age of M e r c a n t i l i s m , 1 5 5 0 t o 1 7 5 0 , and there*s
a picture of the Amsterdam synagogue, which was the center of slave trading for the Dutch.
Amsterdam became a leading port in this period of time for slaving and it was around the
synagogue that the slaving system was established. . . .
According to Jeffries, a Jewish conspiracy - connected not by theology but by race - was behind
the various colonial apparati that were involved in the slave trade.
The entire world was at fault for the abomination of the African slave trade - the colonial powers
that ruled the countries to which slaves were sent, the people who purchased the slaves, those who sold
them (including other Africans and Arabs). But rather than focus on states and economics and sociological
and cultural matters to explain slavery, Dr. Jeffries feels it a more productive use of his time to connect
individual Jews (who at the time were being chased out of many countries by the Inquisition) to the slave
trade, and to thereby blame slavery on "rich Jews."
Dr. Jeffries explains:
We are now preparing the ten volumes dealing with the Jewish relationship with
the black community in reference to slavery so we can put it in the school system. . . .
We'll have the ten major books relating to the Jewish community, the wealthy Jewish
community and enslavement. In Spain they were the grandees managing the money of the
Spanish throne. In Germany in the 1600 and 1700s they were the court Jews managing the
political and economic apparatus of Europe, the Hapsburg Empire, the German states, etc.
We have the names. We know who they were, what they were, what they controlled.
We know when they set up the Dutch East Indian [sic] Company, the Dutch West Indian
[sic] company, the Portuguese Company, the Brazilian company. We know who and what
documents. We know the family connections. We know even when they converted to
1
Some of Dr. Jeffries' apologists claim, as has Dr. Jeffries, that he is not talking about all Jews, but "rich" Jews. But it is their
Jewishness, and not their richness, that makes them special targets for Dr. Jeffries.
Christianity they maintained links with their Jewish community brothers who had not
converted, and that's why they had a network around the world. . . . [T]he Jewish
community [moved] into Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, along with the Syrians
and Lebanese, and they became the lifeline of the fallen Roman Empire in the 15— and
1600's, and they began to institutionalize a trade link with the Middle East. A trade link
. . . dealt with humans.
Dr. Jeffries' view of the Jew as central to the existence of the slave trade is the key to his psychosis.
Dr. Jeffries is not an original thinker, and, like classical anti-Semites before him, he ignores the reality of
discrimination against Jews in Europe and recasts them an as a devilish power behind those very same
forces that were targeting Jews. Note the conspiratorial allegations that make D r . Jeffries' remarks of the
same type heard by victimized Jewish communities throughout the ages: even when they converted, they
"maintained links" and "had a network" for evil purposes.
2
Because these "rich Jews" were always so diabolical, they presumably had to enslave others well
before Africans were the main subjects of the slave trade.
Dr. Jeffries states:
The humans it dealt with for hundreds of years were the Slavic people of Central,
Eastern, and Southern Europe, the Czechs, the Poles, the Yugoslavs, the Russians; an
alliance between the Catholic church and rich Jews selling white Central, Eastern and
Southern Europeans into Arab slavery. . . .
The white slave trade in Europe, because the Central and Eastern Europeans were
pagans. They were not Christians. The Catholic church had no allegiance to them, and the
Jewish community didn't care either which way. So rich Jews and the Catholic church had
an alliance for hundreds of years selling white folks from Central, Eastern and Southern
Europe into slavery in the Arab world, the white slave trade, which is the precursor of
enslavement later.
D R . J E F F R I E S , T H E J E W S A N D C R I T I C S O F HIS B R A N D O F A F R O C E N T R I S M
Dr. Jeffries, along with many others, believes that education has for too long been "Eurocentric,"
meaning that it has taught the history of the world as a European history, and through European eyes, to
the neglect of other experiences.
Rather than trying to include other perspectives as part of a more complete educational framework,
Dr. Jeffries preaches the supremacy of African history, just as he preaches the biological supremacy of
"people of color" over white folk.
W h o are the enemies of those who would teach African supremacy? Y o u guessed it. Here's how
it works, according to Dr. Jeffries:
2
Dr. Jeffries claims that he's "come up with a formulation which I call pyramid analysis. . . . And that pyramid analysis means that
you've got to be able to process the enormity of information about the human experience. Using a pyramid as a model it allows us to
deal the basic rule and understanding of human life and life on the planet and life in the universe, and that's duality.
"Duality and polarity is a basic concept that has to be understood. The pyramidal framework gives us a chance to deal with
that. One polarity is what I call the thesis; the other polarity is what I call the antithesis. [Combine them and you have] synthesis."
To students of political science, Dr. Jeffries' "pyramid analysis" sounds like the Hegelian dialectic diagramed on a Hobbesian chart.
-6-
Rcad Diane Ravitch's record, look at her track record. This is the ultimate,
supreme, sophisticated debonair racist, pure and simple. A n d when Asa Hilliard and the
others called her Miss Daisy, they did it right. A n d Asa said, "We're going to let Miss Daisy
drive her own damn car from now on." A n d Miss Daisy has several partners. Albert Shanker
. . . Arthur Schlesinger . . . A n d then the melting pot man. What is his name? . . . Glazer,
Dr. Nathan Glazer, Melting Pot Glazer. A n d then Dr. Kenneth Jackson. . . .
The old standard was a Bible Belt Texas rural family. That's the standard for the
textbooks that went into the schools for generations. Now the new standard is not a Bible
Belt Texas family, but a sophisticated Texas Jew, and that standard is not good enough
either. Because many people, such as the Ravitches, who happen to be Jewish, have blinded
us from the attack coming from the Jewish community, systematic, unrelenting. A n d until
we can look at it and deal with it, there's no efforts we can make that are going to be
successful. Not anti-Semitic to raise the issue. . . . There's an orchestrated attack by the
Schlesingers and the Shankers working with the white conservatives, the George Wills, the
Heritage Foundation. We're pinpointing their relationship, we're putting it on our African
computer. The document is being prepared.
George W i l l can be a conservative; the most important quality of the Jews who disagree with Dr.
Jeffries is, again, their Jewishness. For Dr. Jeffries, as for Gerald K. Smith or Father Coughlin or Henry
Ford or any of the others who are classical anti-Semites, it is the Jewishness of the other that makes them
evil, and their perceived attacks "systemic" and "unrelenting."
DR.
JEFFRIES AND
JUDAISM
Afrocentrics of Dr. Jeffries' school are so invested in their disdain for anything not rooted in Africa
that their analysis is self contradictory. O n one had, all western religions are evil, "murder cults," as D r .
Clarke referred to them because, as D r . Jeffries explains, it was "in the river valleys of the world [that]
civilization occurred. In the northern regions and other regions like the deserts where the environment was
negative and the ecology was difficult, then you had barbarity."
But while Christianity and Islam and especially Judaism are scorned, they are also viewed as
important, but only because they come out of Africa. In other words, as Dr. Jeffries describes what he
believes to be the point of "Dr. [Cheikh Anta] Diop's latest work . . . C i v i l i z a t i o n a n d B a r b a r i s m [ : ] there's
only one human race and it's the African race. Everything else is a mutation off African genes." Likewise,
there is only one true spirituality and religion, African, and everything else is a mutation and, by necessity,
inferior.
3
Dr.
Jeffries elaborates:
The people of the bible were not European. They were Africans or people of mixed
African blood. A n d you have to begin to deal with that. In our lessons we're going to put
the ten major historical figures in the bible and all of their ten African wives. . . . A n d it's
3
According to Dr. Jeffries: "(T]hc people who built the great cultures of the river valley civilizations, particularly in the Nile Valley,
had a centrality of the female principle and a complementarity of the female principle with the male principle. Europeans don't have
that. They didn't have it then, they don't have it today. Semites don't have it. They didn't have it then, they don't have it today. One
side of the Semitic question is Jews, the other side is Arabs. The female is not at the center of their culture. Catholics don't have it.
That's why when they put the women in the Catholic pictures it comes out as a Black Madonna. They have to reach for the African
woman and child to put a woman in the Catholic Church's picture."
ironic that in the Jewish tradition in the orthodoxy, that if you are an orthodox Jew, you
cannot be a true Jew unless you pass through the woman's life. But isn't it ironic that in
the biblical text most of the great historic Jewish figures had African wives? So we've got
to know that and know what the implications are, know it critically.
Dr. Jeffries point seems to be that if the ten most important Jews were not married to Jewish
women, then their offspring cannot be Jewish. Why is this important? Because, like the followers of
Minister Farrakhan who talk about the "so-called Jews,"' Dr. Jeffries wants to discredit any Judaism that
is not linked to African people.
Jews are to be disdained. So Dr. Jeffries' audience applauds when he declares that [The poem on
the base of the Statute of Liberty] was written by Emma Lazarus . . . She was a rich Sephardic Jew . . . .
The father of Emma Lazarus [was] Moses Lazarus . . . , who made his money in sugar refining and slave
trading."
Yet Judaism must have some value because "the religion that was brought forth by the ancient
Hebrews was most likely the religion of Akehnaten, the Pharaoh who brought forth the concept of the
oneness of G o d , 1400 or thereabout B.C."
Dr. Jeffries declares:
A l l of the human race is African. We know for a fact that the ancient Hebrews
came into the Nile Valley. They came into an African context. Thesis, antithesis. They
came in without ten commandments, they went out with ten commandments. They came
in without circumcision, they went out without [sic] circumcision. They came in without
the concept of bar mitzvah and bas mitzvah, they went out without the — with the concept.
They came in without the concept of the oneness of God, they went out after meeting the
Africans with the concept of one God. A n d the synthesis becomes Judaism. The Greeks
didn't have a pot to pee in. They didn't have writing in the 800's and 900's B.C. They come
into contact with the Africans and they develop their culture. They didn't have philosophy.
They didn't have science. They didn't have mathematics. It's in the context of the
relationship with the Nile Valley that they synthesized this. Same thing happened with the
early Christians. Early Christians come into contact with the Africans of the Nile so the
first Christian nations are Greek, are Egypt and Ethiopia. A n d later the Prophet
Mohammed. Comes into contact trying to raise Arabs from barbarity, comes into contact
with the Nile Valley and then the synthesis becomes Islam. A n d African centeredness gives
you all of these historical movements that are of significance even to the Western world.
Through Dr. Jeffries' lenses and those of his cohorts, only things that come from Africa are
important. Yet, almost in the same breath, he can proclaim, and his followers agree, that for the west, "the
value system is domination, destruction and death. . . . The value system of our people is the three C's -communal, cooperative and collective spiritual development." That it came from Africa made it good; once
it left it became evil. Religions. Values. People.
Farrakhan's followers speak of the Khazars and argue that non-black Jews are descendants of this European kingdom that
converted.
DR. JEFFRIES, T H E JEWS A N D T H E E D U C A T I O N A L S Y S T E M
"Bush wants to put in a . . . a New World Order," Dr. Jeffries declares. "That means they got to
have mind controls in the schools."
Rather, it is Dr. Jeffries who, in the process highlighting African contributions to society in the
curriculum, wants to spread anti-Semitism.
5
Like traditional anti-Semites, he sees individual's Jewishness as the key ingredient in a delusional
conspiracy against what he believes to be important. George W i l l is a conservative; Diane Ravitch is a
"Texas Jew." C C N Y has a "head Jew." Jews as a group are responsible for slavery, and for empowering the
regimes that profited from slavery. Jews, in short, arc the devil."
Dr. Jeffries was a consultant to a curriculum review committee of the state of New York. According
to the C i n c i n n a t i E n q u i r e r , Dr. Jeffries wrote what was designed to be "the Afrocentric component of the
New Y o r k State public school curriculum, grades K through 12." That "curriculum of inclusion" was shelved
by the New Y o r k State Regents. That Dr. Jeffries should have a say in what can be taught to children
about Jews is indeed frightening. Claims of academic freedom may allow him to keep his job — and, indeed,
academic freedom and notions of tenure are both important in their own right for a free and open society,
and have served to protect Jews and Jewish interests many more times than haters like Dr. Jeffries. But that
does not mean that his message should not be challenged at every opportunity, nor his plan to inculcate
anti-Semitism into the school system exposed.
What is equally depressing is that Dr. Jeffries has a hard core of followers. He drew hundreds, and
can draw thousands, of supporters who believe that he speaks the "truth," and that the conspiracy of which
he complains is out to get him. It is a self-fulfilling and self-propelling delusion, one that will hurt both
African Americans and Jews. A n d it is especially disturbing that some academics and community leaders do
7
According to the New York limes. The New Republic, and other sources, many experts have questioned the validity of many
claims of those who share Dr. Jeffries' views.
' Dr. Jeffries noted, in his July 20, 1991 speech, that "I had not touched the Jewish question for the past year. I had made an
agreement with my Jews at City College that I would not deal with it."
Interestingly, he went out of his way to explain a positive contact he had with Jews during his college years:
I was in the Jewish fraternity in college. Most of you may not have known that. . . . One hundred Jews
and me and a couple of Christians. (Laughter) And the president of the Jewish fraternity was called a Rex. So I
had to go through college as Rex, the King of the Jews. Now I managed that. (Laughter) But the most important
about the fraternity was that they had a system -- that they know how to lake tests, they knew how to put a system
of support into place. They had the records of all of the professors. They had their tests. They analyzed how they
changed their questions from year to year to try to fool the students. We left nothing to chance. The Jewish
fraternity won the scholarship trophy fourteen semesters in a row. The whole average of the fraternity was a Dean's
list average. Even dumb Jews made it because there was a system of support.
My roommate was a black youngster from ‫ ״‬the football star Dan Woolen from Cape May, New Jersey.
He was the vice president. So in the I950's at Lafayette College the president of this Jewish fraternity was black,
the vice president was black, two boys from New Jersey.
Dr. Jeffries sees conspiracies, but Jews are not alone. The mysterious "they" can also involve others: "They have us all divided
up. In fact they tell us, 'Don't worry about the economics. We'll lake care of it.' In fact they bring people into our community to
take care of it. Arabs. Vietnamese and other people."
not see his bigotry.
8
Most ironic, it will hurt what is an important agenda ‫־‬- the inclusion of African, Native American,
and other neglected studies as an integral part of the core of academic inquiry. By trying to denigrate all
other knowledge and peoples, Dr. Jeffries and his collaborators give ammunition to those who are not
willing to see a difference between his Afrocentrism and the other, inclusive kind.
8
Dr. A.J Williams-Myers, director of the State University of New York's African-American Institute, which had co-sponsored
the July 20, 1991 festival, was quoted by the New York Times, saying "if a similar conference were held today, he would invite Dr.
Jeffries back."
Dr. Edward Scobie, professor at CCNY's athletic department, said, "Everyone who hates Dr. Jeffries hates us and hates Africa."
Reverend Herbert Daughtry said, "I am convinced the speech is not anti-Semitic."
The Amsterdam News, the leading newspaper geared to New York's African American community, wrote that its "editors have
viewed the tape. . . . and have concluded that there is nothing anti-Semitic, racist or chauvinistic in its content."
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12890 Hillcrest Rd. #103
Dallas, T X 75230
214 387-2943
DENVER
300 S. Dahlia, Rm. 201
Denver, C O 80222
303 320-1742
DETROIT
163 Madison Ave.
Detroit, MI 48226
313 965-3353
HOUSTON
2600 SW Freeway, #714
Houston, T X 77098
713 524-1133
KANSAS CITY
2200 W. 75th Street #218
Prairie Village, KS 66208
913 236-8313
L O N G ISLAND
165 E . 56th Street
New York, N Y 10022
212 751-4000
LOS ANGELES
6505 Wilshire Blvd. #315
Los Angeles, C A 90048
213 655-7071
MIAMI
3000 Biscayne Blvd. #412
Miami, F L 33137
305 576-4240
MILWAUKEE
759 N. Milwaukee Street
Milwaukee, WI 53202
414 291-2140
MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL
17515 Wayzota Blvd. #201
Minneapolis, M N 55426
612 545-7001
NEW JERSEY
303 Millburn Avenue
Millburn, NJ 07041
201 379-7844
NEW Y O R K
165 E . 56th Street
New York, N Y 10022
212 751-4000
ORANGE COUNTY
1100 Main Street, #D1
Irvine, C A 92714
714 660-8525
PHILADELPHIA
1616 Walnut St. #2106
Philadelphia, PA 19103
215 732-4000
PHOENIX
3443 N . Central Ave. #906
Phoenix, A Z 85012
602 248-8845
PITTSBURGH
300 S. Craig, #224
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
412 683-7927
PORTLAND
1220 SW Morrison #930
Portland, Oregon 97205
503 295-6761
ST. LOUIS
7750 Clayton Rd. #103
St. Louis, M O 63117
314 647-2519
SAN DIEGO
8950 Villa LaJolla Dr. #2210
LaJolla, C A 92037
619 546-8777
SAN FRANCISCO
121 Steuart Street
San Francisco, C A 94105
415 777-3820
SARASOTA/TAMPA
12902 A National Drive
Tampa, F L 33617
813 985-9145
SEATTLE
1411 Joseph Vance Bldg.
1402 Third Avenue
Seattle, W A 98101
206 622-6315
SOUTH C E N T R A L FLORIDA
900 N. Federal Highway
Boca Raton, Florida 33432
407 368-0499
WASHINGTON D C .
2027 Massachusetts Ave., N W
Washington, D . C . 20036
202 265-2000
WESTCHESTER
235 Mamaroneck Avenue
White Plains, N Y 10605
914 948-5585
THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE
Institute of Human Relations
165 East 56th Street
New York, New York 10022-2746
August 1991
Single copy $1.00
Quantity prices on request